Yeah. The health concern. All right. Good morning again. I will call the June 23rd, 2026, Washington County Board of Commissioners meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Here. Commissioner Karwoski? Here. Commissioner Cox? Here. Commissioner Bigham? Here. Commissioner Clausen? Here. Roll call taken. All present. Thank you. Please join us for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. We are at the comments from the public portion of our meeting. I do not have any speakers' cards at the dais. If there's anybody in the audience that would like to address the board, if you would come forward. All right. Seeing none, we are on to approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve today's agenda? Move to approve the agenda as published. Second. Moved by Commissioner Miron, seconded by Commissioner Cox. Discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Motion carries. Next is consent calendar. Are there any items that the board would like to pull? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve today's consent calendar? I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar A through J as presented. Second. Moved by Commissioner Karwoski and seconded by Commissioner Miron. Clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Consent calendar passes five zero. Thank you very much. Now on to what is going to be a wonderful presentation related to our coordinated response. And we have a group of people that are going to be presenting, including the celebrity Riggs. And so, I think we're going to start with Tracy Thompson Would want to come up and start off the presentation, and really appreciate this update. It's been an amazing program and had a huge impact on Washington County, and I believe it's important to highlight this, and obviously, it'll be related to the budget in the coming months, so... I think we're good here. Good morning. I'm Sergeant Michelle Follender from the Washington County Sheriff's Office. First of all, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with everyone today about Coordinated Response in Washington County and the important role that it plays in supporting individuals within our entire community. Let's see if I can figure this out. There we go. As you can see by the slide and the room full of my colleagues and co-responders, I would like to talk to you about a few of the things that we've been working on and give you an update on the program. So a little bit of a history with Coordinated Response. It began in 2020 with the sheriff's office and the Woodbury Police Department. It started with each of those agencies having a detective. In 2021, we were able to add an embedded social worker to each of those programs. In 2022, we also added therapy dogs to the sheriff's office and also to Woodbury. 2023 saw the Stillwater Police Department added to our program with a detective and a social worker at their agency as well. 2024, as you know, was a big year of growth for us. The county board approved a three-year expansion project, which allowed us to add additional social workers to both Woodbury, the sheriff's office, and to the newly formed Cottage Grove program. That brought us to two social workers and a detective in Woodbury and the sheriff's office, and then obviously the new program in Cottage Grove. In 2025, the expansion allowed for a social worker at the Oak Park Heights Police Department to work alongside their newly appointed CRT detective. And then this summer, Oakdale will be starting their program with a detective and a social worker. And like I said, that was because of the expansion project that the county board allowed us to move forward and add those social workers, which has been a great help. Oops. There we go. So what started out as two agencies, Woodbury and the sheriff's office, each with one detective, has expanded in just over five years to seven and a half full-time social workers, eight law enforcement detectives, and then three therapy dogs. So this is showing that we have the need within our county, but also that we have the support of our police departments, our sheriff's office, the county, and obviously the county board. So now that you know who we are, we're going to tell you a little bit about what we do. The biggest thing that I like to highlight is the partnerships that we have within the community, and that starts with law enforcement and social workers, and obviously expands into a lot of other areas. This partnership allows us to provide services for in-progress calls and post-crisis follow-up for people with mental health issues, or that people are experiencing a crisis. So specifically on the law enforcement end, we all have a very specific role to do, and for law enforcement, we provide and assist with crisis intervention. For the sheriff's office, that is mainly post-crisis, but we do have some in-progress calls. We work on de-escalation and having trauma-enforced responses. Every single deputy at the sheriff's office goes through CIT training. It's a 40-hour program, so that if we are unavailable, they are also available to help out on the road. A lot of our CRT employees also work with SWAT, and some of them are actually on the SWAT team for negotiations. Law enforcement promotes safe resolutions. Sometimes that does mean a citation or an arrest, but when possible, we try to direct people towards services, so that we don't see them having the same things come up or calling 911 repeatedly. We want to try to get in there and get to the root of the problem instead of just throwing a bandaid on it. We're providing support. We're establishing scene safety when that's needed. We're trying to balance public safety with providing services, giving them a little extra time, providing that empathy in a dignified and respectful way. We're engaging in proactive outreach, building relationships within other services within the county, and providing whatever services we can for people with reoccurring mental health issues or challenges. Thanks, Michelle. I am Hannah Driver. I am the senior clinical social worker, and I'm based out of the Washington County Sheriff's Office. So I'm here to initially start talking about what the role of social worker is as part of these coordinated response teams. All of our social workers are seasoned staff who are trained in doing crisis assessments, working on transports hold, helping the clients that we serve get connected to services and support. We provide that insight into a mental health crisis, whether it's post-crisis to kind of look what happened after the fact, or if it's in that moment of that actual mental health crisis in that active 911 call, or going out and seeing somebody that we've previously worked with as well. We add a social work perspective to the law enforcement response. Sometimes we can show up on scene and the individual either doesn't want to talk with law enforcement or needs that mental health kind of social work aspect where they can talk with that person. So we can partner with our law enforcement ... detectives to just kind of help give that support and be that person in that moment for that individual to talk to. We work to connect people with resources and services. I'll talk about that a little bit more on the next slide, but we want to meet people where they're at. We want to provide them with the resources that make sense for them, and that goes above and beyond what is just mental health services. It can look like numerous other services and supports and connecting with them. Another role that kind of goes on is we provide information within our own jurisdictions regarding mental health things. A lot of our social workers across our different jurisdictions, we're working with patrol and other law enforcements in our areas to train on mental health, provide some in-services, background, other resources, and supports. We're coordinating them on sometimes participating in scenarios of what it would look like actually on a mental health scene, when we can't be available to go there because mental health is 24/7, and we're not always available, and what other things that they can do. And then we serve as a liaison, and we partner with not just our own internal community services at Washington County, but other organizations, whether it be nonprofits, hospitals, different things like that, other different contracted agencies that work with Washington County. We want to partner to make this, everybody's getting the help that they need, and sometimes that's partnering with these different resources. And for us, being creative about what that partnership looks like, too. It's not just mental health resources that we partner with. It's food shelves. It's other community resources. It's our homeless outreach areas. It's just what we need to do to help balance those different things out. We provide what we kind of call in our unit gap services. Oftentimes, there's a wait list or things take its time to kind of come into place, and things like that, whether that's getting them connected to therapy or getting into a psychiatry appointment or even just getting connected with some financial resources, whether it be getting food stamps or other financial assistance. There's a wait period. So how can we help those people get connected to other resources in the meantime? And oftentimes, we, as the CRT social workers, are that resource. So we can oftentimes connect with them quicker. So whether that's we are there at the active 911 scene, or we're calling them the next day or two or even a few days after that crisis or that incident, it's working with them, meeting with them, asking them what's going on, seeing if we can go out and meet with them. We help them try to navigate the system. Paperwork is hard and it's complicated even for myself, and then imagine going through a crisis situation, even if it's following that crisis. Sometimes it's just helping them navigate what some of that paperwork looks like. And so I know for myself, if I go to the doctor's office, sometimes those forms are complicated. How can we just help walk people through that regardless of what that form looks like? And then we can provide some stabilization services until they can get connected, whether that stabilization looks like going out and meeting with them on a regular basis until they can get into therapy, until they can find a psychiatrist, until they can get off that wait list somewhere, or until we can get them connected to another type of resource. And sometimes we are that resource. We have people that we still work with who, whether it's due to their mental health, they only will connect with us or they're continuously calling 911. So how can we continue to be that support and that resource until we can find that path that is going to be effective for them? And then we're just a connection between the 911 system and our community services. I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to other community services providers, whether it's both internal with Washington County or otherwise, who weren't aware of the level of 911 involvement that an individual has. So sometimes it's just helping bridge that gap so everybody can have that full picture of what's going on and how we can best support our people. Sometimes it's also even bridging that gap between families of they didn't realize how bad things were. We deal with a lot of other types of calls, whether it be domestic-related calls or dementia-related calls, where sometimes the adult children of that person with dementia didn't realize how bad things were at home. So how can we best support them and get people connected? So again, our goal is to kind of be that gap service and help bridge and get people connected to what is that most appropriate service. Thank you. Hi, my name is Kevin. I am one of the social workers in the Woodbury police jurisdiction. Thank you for letting us come out and brag about the work that we're doing. In Woodbury, we have two social workers, two detectives, and a therapy dog, Otis, who everybody knows. Like Hannah was saying, all of our jurisdictions will respond to in-progress, but the size of the jurisdiction and the number of calls in Woodbury is more frequent in terms of the opportunities to help in the in-progress calls. So we support patrol and our community, both first response calls and second response. First response is the call comes from dispatch. We're immediately going to that scene and helping patrol deescalate, figuring out what we can do to help, whether it's working with families or the individuals. Second response calls are patrol has already been out, the scene has already been cleared in terms of safety, and we'll come and again work with patrol to find out how we can best support the situation. Sometimes that's providing resources, sometimes that's providing connection to resources. So in mental health or homelessness or substance abuse calls, those are the kind of calls that we get involved in, in first and second response. We will offer gift cards sometimes for folks, depending on the situation. But really, we just want to be helpful based on that specific situation. Sometimes There are critical incidents such as fires or a death, which are very complicated. There's no script or playbook for these kind of calls. You're literally building the plane while you're flying it. But again, trying to meet people where they're at and really provide some dignity and some hope and some options for folks. Other kinds of calls that we'll get involved with on first or second call are, say, civil commitment revocations or probation violations where the immediate outcome is that individual's either going to go to jail or the hospital against their wishes, which, as you can imagine, can be complicated. And it can be awkward saying, "Well, I know my partner just arrested you, but we want to help." But sometimes that's received well, sometimes it isn't. But we're at least trying to plant a seed that while this is a tough situation, we want to help you find some options and find a path out of this situation. Another kind of call that we'll do in progress involves mental health holds. We take it very seriously, taking somebody's, temporarily, their freedom or their right to make a decision on whether or not they go to the hospital. And in some ways, it's black and white in terms of an imminent sense or threat of harm to self or others. That can be clear-cut, but it's not always clear cut. So really trying to safety plan and problem solve where maybe a hospital stay is not necessary. But in those situations when a hard decision needs to be made and the hospital is the best place for them, we'll make that determination. But again, we want to give as much choice and freedom and dignity to those situations as we can. Another area where we will help is in domestic violence. It's fairly rare we'll go to a first call in those situations because patrol is making the determinations. Who is the perpetrator? Who is the victim? Sometimes it's unclear. Having too many people involved in that situation can make that more difficult, but we definitely want to be helpful in connecting people to resources in those very hard situations. As many of you know, it takes seven, eight attempts to escape a DV situation, a domestic violence situation. The path out of that generally seems more clear from the outside than from the inside. There's children and pets and just longstanding relationships. Those are difficult decisions. So we want to, if somebody wants help, we want to be there for them, but again, also be sensitive to all of the dynamics of their situation. Sometimes that involves giving them a burner phone or gift cards or something immediately to give them an option out of that situation. It's often connecting to Tubman. There's great resources in regards to domestic violence. But in a lot of areas in our system, the demand outpaces the supply. So there just is a lot of need in that area to support folks. We want to help the victims in those situations, but also, if interested, the perpetrator to break these cycles. We haven't had tons of luck in terms of connecting the perpetrators to help, but there has been some cases where we have gotten some buy-in. And a couple of situations where it was very helpful for the perpetrator, and at that point, they were open to some help, and we were able to help that family. So again, we just want to be helpful. It feels really good to be a part of the system where, like Hannah was saying, there are gaps. We want people who want help to be able to get it. And thank you for having us up. Thank you. So my name is Cherise Lemine. I'm with Stillwater. I'm a detective there, so the law enforcement side of our unit. Our team is two, myself and another embedded social worker. So a question we get often is, how has this made a difference in your community, and what's changed? Given this program is designed to embed a social worker into police departments, my perspective from the law enforcement is the change of the in-depth and personalized help that we can do when we're reaching the community. So when going to a call as normal patrol, there's always another call, there's always another need from emergencies to not emergencies. They can't stay there forever to work through problems. So what's great about this is it allows-- They still see us together. They still know I or the person is law enforcement, but we're working on it together in a softer approach. Meaning plain clothes or a softer tactical uniform to kind of connect and deep dive what is going on, what's the root of the problem, what do you need, what services do we have? And you can really have a thorough conversation and make some progress on what's going on and what's causing these calls and these repeat needs. So that's a huge perk of it, and it ties in community resources from a broad spectrum. As already kind of mentioned, it can be from the homeless shelter to a food shelf, to senior citizen supports, to therapy services or chemical assessment or dependency services, support groups, grief groups. Mixed in with all of the resources offered through the county, combining that effort, it just builds that trust and that bond and connects people to places that they didn't know existed, and to be frank, officers didn't even really know existed. So it's a full circle moment in that regard. It also humanizes, I think, the relationships that they have with police officers, having that soft. Sometimes they just see the uniform and the badge, the gun, the squad car When you remove that barrier, it's easier to tap into what the needs are and meet those needs a little bit more gracefully, I think, when they're not seeing that scary upfront demeanor. So a lot of it's just time. Time on that specific call, time with the family or the person. Sometimes it's in the moment on that original call. Sometimes we're relieving patrol. They leave, we stay, and we sit down for a long time, sometimes. Sometimes it's after the fact, depending on the situation, where we meet, and maybe we re-meet, and maybe there's more phone calls or more sit-downs. So it really kind of depends, but that's not a traditional police service. So this is filling a need or an area that didn't really exist before, and it can be very beneficial. Another area that we dabble with, and Stillwater, as you know, has a lot of events, so we might utilize this the most, but an option for us to have a booth or a table at an event has been something that we've dabbled with, and it just allows for people to come communicate with us, ask questions. We hand out brochures, we give our business cards, whatever. But again, it's building that trust, shedding light on what exists already, a meet and greet. Sometimes it allows somebody to come and ask something or seek out help for them or a loved one, when they wouldn't normally have asked. They would have never made that call, and they stumble across us. And what we've also noticed at some of these events is there might be more than one booth or more than one table in this lane, so it almost normalizes the need for help because you're making your rounds. And so it doesn't have to be so intentionally sought out. So that's been a benefit, and it has worked where we've worked with somebody stemming from an event. So that's been a nice addition. So it's been a good program. Thank you. Thank you, Detective. Hi, I'm Kibby Claflin. I am the embedded mental health professional with Oak Park Heights with my partner, Sergeant Zwack. We're the babies of the family right now. So I'm not going to repeat a lot of what's been said. I think it is a beautiful program. I think I'm doing this right. Some of the benefits that we have that I see from it is we're given the ability to leverage the skills and the relationship between law enforcement and social services to provide the best possible intervention for people. Stabilization was mentioned, and that gap service, which is how I view it the most, we get to join these people on their journey right after difficult crises, difficult moments. We get to join with them to help connect to those services. Sometimes we are that service until it happens. And we get to stay with them for a little bit. When we meet other people in the community, it was mentioned, too, where we bridge with active county services. We're in a place where we can see where something might not be meeting a need, where a new need is arising, and we can connect that and partner with our own agencies within the Washington County to make sure that person receives what they need and stabilizes. These are not my slides, so I am just going to keep doing this. Nope. There we go. I think the other thing that we get to do is we get to see how outcomes happen. Law enforcement has that immediate interaction with community, but they don't always get to see, or hadn't previously gotten to see how people recover, how they get connected, what services are available that they did get connected to, how to make that happen. There's a more developed trust between county services and law enforcement in that partnership. I think that was one of the biggest benefits as well. And it was mentioned how law enforcement and social services are viewed as a partnership and with the attempt, at least, to provide intervention and support in a dignified way. We look different, right? Social services is not child protection coming to take your kids anymore. Law enforcement isn't people just providing an intervention to a crime. We're doing something that really does normalize seeking help and building trust. I think pretty much everything else was said, so I'm going to let everybody play with the dog. Thank you. All right, let's figure this out. All right. Okay. So I'm Scott Shaver. I'm the full-time detective in Cottage Grove of the co-responder team. I have Jen Stubblefield as our partner. And then the third full-time person in our unit is Mr. Riggs, as Commissioner Bigham already kind of gave that away. But that's okay. Let's see. One more. One more? There we go. So, we do currently have three therapy canines within the county. Penny is on the left. That's Detective Wiggin's puppy. She's certified in her therapy program, and she's currently about eight months old. Riggs is the middle guy there. He's 17 months old. And then there's the OG, Otis from Woodbury. He's a super good boy. The stuff I was going to talk about has already been kind of covered, so I'll try to find a way to bring up new stuff. One thing that was brought up is all three handlers are SWAT negotiators. So in addition to the co-response team meetings and trainings, we also get together six or seven times a year with our SWAT training as well. So these dogs interact marvelously and oftentimes are a distraction to what we're trying to get accomplished in our trainings. It's kind of funny how Penny bullies the other two dogs. She thinks she's the queen of the roost, but nevertheless. So some of the things that these therapy dogs do on scene, so every dog is deployed differently. Every handler kind of has their own way or idea how they deploy these dogs. But one thing that's consistent through all three dogs is they use their body pressure to provide touch therapy for people. People have talked about deescalating and bringing the temperature down on calls. This absolutely is the case with these dogs. We bring Riggs out on active crisis calls. It's pretty crazy on how he's able to handle a situation, deescalate things. He's got 100% success rate. We can talk about numbers on the next slide, but it's pretty amazing to see what these guys do. Again, these are the two slides that helps with sensory touch. All three dogs are trained to identify stressors in human beings. Oftentimes when we get stressed, we use our hands. Riggs will come up and bump your hand or your leg or just to get your attention, say, "Hey, you're stressed out. Here I am." He'll put his chin on your leg. He'll wrap his head around you. He does all kinds of cool stuff. So, and then obviously they build rapport with the team. Like I said, in all these trainings, they get together. I got pictures of Riggs walking Otis around on a leash. Riggs, as you saw earlier, he likes to get up on tables and people pet him. And we do that with clients too, all three of these dogs. We bring them to reactive crisis calls where maybe somebody gets transported to a hospital. We follow up. It's our job to follow up with them two or three days after they're transported, if they're released, and then we bring the dogs in most of the time. And just we have conversations, and as we're having these conversations, these people just pet the dogs, and it just lowers the temperature. The optics are good. We dress as detectives in a little bit casual uniform. The social workers come in, they're dressed in plain clothes or business casual, and then the dog just brings the temperature down a whole lot more, and then we can get down to brass tacks and how we can provide services with these people. Yeah, each individual dog's individually by each department. So actually, Riggs is property of the Cottage Grove Police Department. I'm a single handler. Woodbury does it much the same way, and same with county, where people often ask like, "Do you get to bring him home at night?" And the answer is always yes. And then he comes to work with me. So he was originally going to be an internal support dog for the Cottage Grove Police Department with the idea of maybe we'd deploy him on reactive crisis calls. We've worked all the way up to in-progress crisis calls. So these numbers well let's go from the top. He's 17 months old. He was born December 1st of 2024. He is the first Cottage Grove Police Department therapy dog. These numbers are of January 1, and the deployments, there's probably 15 more deployments since then. So, and then there's 12 we've been recently, just over the last six or seven months, charting in-progress crisis calls. These are 911 calls. We show up. People are actively dysregulated, or these oftentimes the mental health hold has already been written, and these people would 10 years ago, 100% of the time would go to a hospital. And we, as law enforcement, would do everything we could to get these people to the hospital, which doesn't make much sense now because why are we going to chemically sedate, fight, wrestle, tase, handcuff these people to get them help, right? Seems crazy. We really don't do that anymore, especially with these therapy dogs. But we're bringing Riggs in and like I said, he's got 100% success rate. You see embedded in these numbers, the 251 deployments. These are some of the most impactful things in these deployments or areas are we do community events like this, where each team will go out in the community, present in front of a school with a dog and our embedded social worker. Our team, we rarely have a PowerPoint because we never know which way these meetings are going to go. Sometimes they want to talk about careers as a social worker within law enforcement. Most of the time, they just want to talk about Riggs, and every once in a while, I'll get a question about me. So, also they're good PR for departments. We had Riggs out at Strawberry Fest. I probably handed out 500 of his cards. I had active clients that we manage currently coming up to Strawberry Fest just to see Riggs. Just not as a call for service, not as a follow-up, just as, "I'm going to come to Strawberry Fest and see you and Riggs." So, what else? I guess we're going to take questions afterwards. Are we good? We got a couple more slides. Couple more slides. I think I'll hand it over to Tracy, and then I think at the end you'll have the ability to ask some questions or come pet Riggs or whatever you guys want to do. Thank you. Thank you, Detective. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Riggs. I get to follow Riggs and Scott. No, you don't. Good morning. I'm Tracy Thompson. I'm a clinical supervisor with Washington County Community Services, and I supervise the social workers that are part of the embedded program with the law enforcement agencies. So I'm just going to hit a couple slides about stats and numbers. We use a shared program to be able to enter in all of our data. Both law enforcement and social workers will enter it in there. And so that's where we get these numbers from. You can see the growth that we've had since the start of our program. The top slide shows the program as a whole. The bottom slide shows per jurisdiction. This is the same as that bottom slide, just in a different format. So the referrals that we get, as mentioned, come from lots of different places. Most of them are 911 calls, whether in progress at the time, or follow-up for police reports. We also get the referrals from internal partners, whether that's law enforcement directly or social services workers, or sometimes from families and other folks in the community. And then this slide shows our contacts, which a contact includes in-person, it could include a phone call, a text. And so again, the numbers continue to increase as our program increases with the volume for the jurisdictions that were involved at the beginning, as well as adding new programs each year. And so our folks are continuing to interact with individuals in the community to make a difference in lots of different ways, with those initial calls as well as follow-ups. Again, the slide shows per jurisdiction for those number of contacts. I think as mentioned, I think for every one of our speakers, it's that partnership that's really made this program work. And so we appreciate the opportunity to come back at the end of that three-year expansion project that was approved by the board, and have appreciated the partnerships throughout this entire progress. We were able to have the opportunity to do the research at the very beginning, set up the program for how we wanted it to work, and cover a lot of ground. So those are partnerships between the county and all the cities, between the detectives and the social workers, between law enforcement and social service, and then all of those other partnerships that really make it work. So our social workers that work in the law enforcement agencies, they have the connection to all the other social workers that are in social service, whether it's adult protection, child protection, crisis unit, case managers, housing outreach, as well as law enforcement. They're our inside for the rest of patrol and law enforcement. So it's all of those partnerships that have made this hugely successful, and we will continue to grow and expand a lot of the types of work that we originally started off that this was mental health crisis calls. And so that was the main focus. But as we've gotten into the program and into the jurisdictions, there's so much more that we're touching on because mental health is everywhere. So it's part of those domestic calls, it's part of a fire, it's part of any kind of stressful event, for homelessness. And so that mental health piece has really outreached us to be able to touch all the other cases that come before us. And so, again, thank you so much for the opportunity to come this morning. Thank you so much. Really appreciate each of the presenters. Commissioner Miron. Well, first of all, I want to thank Chair Bigham for as she works to set the agendas for our meetings with staff to recognize the value of the information here that's being presented today. And what a great presentation. You guys all took a turn and did a nice job. I was pleased to see item E on our consent agenda today was agreement with the City of Oakdale, for expansion of the program. And I'm wondering, as was described early on in the presentation, it was described as a countywide initiative. But I'm wondering, what's limiting our expansion of the program? Obviously, we've got a lot of other communities with police departments that are not yet partnering with us. And so I'm wondering if that's the cost share from a budget standpoint for Washington County. Is it a budget issue because of that cost share with the communities that might be able to utilize these services? And I'm also wondering how the initiative is being implemented within the contract communities that the sheriff's department is serving. Whether or not that cost share would apply then to the contract communities if they chose to, and how that would play into this possibility, I think of more of a broader countywide initiative. Thank you. So we did reach out to all the jurisdictions so shortly after the board had approved the expansion project and both our manager and director from social services had also gone to a chief's meeting to talk about the opportunities as well, and then I've had conversations with each of the law enforcement agencies. And I do think that some of the agencies are still looking at how they build that into their funding for their own budgets within that city. We had costed it out in terms of what it would be for what we would need to add a social worker to each agency, and that was part of what had been presented, in terms of from that county piece for the social work side of what it would look like. And so then again, I think the cities are still working on... I know they've all had an interest in it, and have talked to their councils and their internal, so the jurisdictions that we still have left, I know that they are considering it, just haven't been able to make that final number budget work yet. And then with regards to the sheriff's office, and I will let Sergeant Fohlendorf and Hannah speak a little bit to that for the agencies that the sheriff's office works with of the contracted, they are part of the work that we do for the sheriff's office. Yeah. That was one of the reasons we really pushed to add a second detective and a second embedded social worker. So, our two detectives and two social workers serve the entire area that the sheriff's office patrols. So it does cover our contract cities. It covers Afton, Bayport... Or excuse me, not Bayport. Afton, Baytown, West Lakeland, Lake Elmo. You name it. It covers everybody. We have some cities that have a little higher use, but that's okay. We make sure that we touch anybody that needs help, needs services, needs follow-up, we get to them. Special guest, Sheriff. Sorry. Not as important as Riggs though. I totally agree. All three of the therapy dogs, for that matter. Madam Chair, Commissioners, Commissioner Miron. As far as the cost-sharing with the cities, the contract cities, that is included with the cost that we provide. So those cities do benefit from the two social workers and the two detectives that are there. So cities like Hugo or Afton, et cetera, they're covered. Yeah, I think- Yeah ... Madam Chair, if I may. I think the point is, this really is a countywide initiative, and even though we've got a limited number of police departments listed on here that are working with us, it really is much broader than what's been identified. And I appreciate seeing that, and I'm sure that the contract communities recognize the value here as well and appreciate really the minimal cost that we're providing a much broader and more effective service to Washington County. So, thank you. Commissioner Karwoski. Add to that, I apologize. Go ahead. We do have a lot of people traveling through the county, and we do make contact, or the deputies and our workers make contact with people that aren't necessarily residents. But we do try to make that contact and hand them off. We've met with St. Croix County. We have a lot of interaction with people that are coming in from St. Paul. If we have somebody in our area that we know lives in Woodbury, that's part of that collaboration that we're calling the other CRT workers and saying, "Hey, have you had contact with this person?" And so even if they are not a part of our community, we still try to assist them in any way we can. One other thing to just add for what we do with regards to be able to help those other jurisdictions that don't have the embedded social workers yet, is that we did in community services, we added a social worker to dispatch, so another partnership with the sheriff's office and law enforcement. So we have a crisis response unit staff person who is embedded in the dispatch, the communication center, and that person is trying to do some follow-up on mental health police reports that would come through for those other jurisdictions with phone calls or offering some additional crisis services if able to, and would love to get embedded social workers in those departments because they can actually go out into the field and do a little bit more, but we are trying to at least help and answer those kinds of questions and be available too for what we can in terms of not having the actual social workers there yet. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you all for coming. This is very informative. In fact, a lot of my questions have been asked with the additional in-live presentation. It's also special to have Riggs here. He looks very relaxed. I have a few points to make. One of my questions, and Sheriff Starry answered it, is where as an example, I represent Mahtomedi, Pine Springs, Willernie, Birchwood, even Landfall. They don't have their own police departments, but when it's embed, that cost, you're sharing in that cost, so it's equitable. And then the departments like Oakdale and Woodbury are doing it on their own, but there is a charge. So it's equitable, and as Commissioner Miron pointed out, it's starting to be pretty much all across the county. So, I was wondering, one question I had, and I know, I think, Detective Shaver. I was curious if you could expand on the role of the detective in this coordinated response team approach. It was kind of singled out as a key role to the response team. Yeah, so each department kind of does their own thing. I feel like we have about 70% of all our detectives with our embedded social workers follow up and respond to, or at least follow up on mental health calls. That's like the meat and potatoes of what we do. So oftentimes we'll get information. That's always the challenge is information-sharing. But once we get information, like over the weekend that our patrol officers responded to a call, we'll triage those calls over the weekend, and then we start checking off what we prioritize as what we need to follow up on. So for instance, we don't work on the weekend. Saturday night, a individual gets transported for mental health reasons to the hospital. On Monday morning, we're on the phone trying to contact either the person that called in on that or the individual. So then we'll either meet them where they're at in their place, or sometimes we even go to the hospital to meet these people, or sometimes we just meet at a park with Riggs. Like I said, also for Cottage Grove, we do targeted violence, so threat assessment piece. I think Woodbury does ERPOs quite a bit. Stillwater's, I don't want to speak for them, but I will. They concentrate on sex crimes. So that 30% we're kind of left to figure out our own way, and each department kind of settles on if I have a question about an ERPO, I call Adam at Woodbury. Some people reach out to me, ask about targeted violence or threat assessment pieces. So we all kind of cross over as detectives and social workers into those fields both ways. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate the additional explanation as well. And just by- Just by virtue, domestic violence falls on almost all of our plates, too. So we in Cottage Grove respond to domestic violence calls and find our way, whatever the scene looks like, whether we offer support to a victim, or we offer them resources. If they're looking, we talk about safety planning, things like that. We find our way with the victims, or if there's children, we connect them with child protection if we have to. So we do a lot with domestic violence, too. And if I could, does that answer all your questions, or should I elaborate? Because I talk a lot. No, that's very good. Yes. And then- Unless there's something additional you want to share. Yeah, so the question was a county initiative for embedded social workers and how we respond. I can assure you that I've heard from several mental health professionals in other counties that the way we're doing it here is the standard. We do it right here. We take the time to follow up. We truly co-respond. Other counties say they have co-response teams, but they're separate. Our teams are all embedded with each other. Jen and I spend most our days in the squad car going from call to call that involve mental health, stuff like that. So we are a true model from other counties, and I hear it from all kinds of mental, because we do, we work with mental health professionals in all counties, and I've heard on more than one occasion, you guys actually do it right down there in Washington County. So just wanted to add that piece, too. Awesome. Thank you. I was curious, this is a question for all of you, whoever could step up and answer it. This county board's been very supportive of early mental health involvement wherever we can. No better example is this program. My way of thinking is having this role of the embedded social worker is getting to problems, family problems, individual problems, at a sooner time when the problem's less magnified, less costly, more legal, maybe more dangerous. Are you seeing by this program savings in the community by that early intervention versus not having the program and waiting till later? You want to talk? Go ahead, and then I can add. Yeah. Thanks. So one of the challenges we have here in our embedded teams is how do we chart progress or growth or successes, right? Because oftentimes you can't document or quantify something that doesn't happen. I can assure you the answer to your question is yes. Early and constant intervention with these mental health people that are suffering dysregulated crisis, yes, it absolutely makes a difference. How we chart that or show progress in that area, sometimes it's hard. I can't tell you how many times RIGS has intervened with somebody, and they didn't assault an officer, or the other way, the officer doesn't use force on that individual. Those are really hard numbers to quantify, but I can assure you those things are happening every day. So I'll let Tracy speak more. We've had these conversations internally, too, and I think sometimes it depends who you ask, whether it's preventative or reactive. From our social service side, we very much think that it's a preventative piece because it allows us to get to these individuals a little sooner than we would with them coming through the system, and they need to be impaired to a sense where they fit some of that criteria for us to be able to get involved if they're not always willing. So we see it very much as preventative because we can avoid somebody maybe needing to be committed or needing to have that involuntary service piece because now we can come out. We can give them those services that maybe they weren't aware of. From law enforcement side, I think they're going out to these 911 mental health calls anyway. So for them, it continues to be that reactive piece, but they can do it a little bit differently with the social workers involved. Like Detective Shaver said, it's hard to measure that always in terms of getting that on paper in numbers, but what we see in that collaborative piece is that it does make a difference. And sometimes then we reduce those frequent 911 mental health calls because they can call directly to the team. They have the numbers for their detectives or their social workers, and they can call them up, or they just do regular checks, so they kind of keep coming out to meet with them to make sure that they're following through with what they need. Thank you. And my last just comment as, as Commissioner Miron pointed out on our consent calendar item E is adding a embedded social worker in Oakdale. I reside there. I know they're excited about that- Mm-hmm ... their police department and city council. And Woodbury's an example of expanding this role, bigger population, so they've added this level of professionalism and intervention. So thank you all for coming. Commissioner Claussen. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. Sorry, my microphone wasn't on the whole time. Thank you for the presentation. I really enjoyed the comprehensive view from each social worker and from each supporting staff and officers. And the more we were talking, the more I was thinking about the program itself and the most often types of issues you must deal with. I would imagine it's domestic violence and those types of issues that come about. But I was thinking more about seniors and the protected class of cybersecurity and other things that are occurring as we continue with AI and how that also puts us in more vulnerable places and with data. And so I was curious of how you guys work with seniors in this program, and also I was interested to know how you guys work with the HOST homeless team I'll tackle the first question with seniors. We've seen an increase in that population. I think it was touched on with Alzheimer's or dementia, also some hoarding issues or just maybe not great living conditions. As far as fraud, AI, cases like that, we have seen a little more of that type of stuff. That's where I think it's really great where the detectives are working with the social workers, because not only can we look at it from a criminal aspect to see if criminal charges need to be filed, if somebody is preying on, scamming or frauding a senior, we have the knowledge to move forward with that, but also to work with a social worker to maybe educate, teach about frauds, about scams, maybe work with family members to make sure that their finances, there's a backup to assist with things like that. So we do see cases like that, and this is a perfect example of where the collaboration with law enforcement and social workers comes together. So as far as- And to kind of continue that piece here before we talk about the homeless or the HOST team. We also, with some of those fraud cases or with the seniors with dementia or other kind of concerns like that, I know at least our unit, and our other social workers in our other units as well, will partner with and sometimes get more information, collaborate with our partners to also just kind of see what we can do to also potentially does it edge up to the piece of getting adult protection involved, having to make some of those vulnerable adult reports. If we can partner with them to get adult protection who, they're the professionals in that field to kind of help even further get more assistance if there's needed for that adult protection, vulnerable adult level. But we'll continue to partner and work with those individuals or those families as well, if needed. And then regards to working with our HOST or our homeless outreach team, it's a great partnership. I talked with two members of our homeless outreach team yesterday regarding two separate cases. So sometimes, and again, all of our teams look at that. We partner with them, whether it makes sense to partner and us go out together and work with individuals, or whether it's referring them to individuals that we know that are in our areas, for them to go check out with or things like that. Or if it's a pending eviction coming up. I know with the sheriff's office, we also have the civil department who does a lot with evictions throughout the whole county, not just- Right ... the sheriff's office jurisdiction. So we have even systems in place where we can touch base with our HOST, our homeless outreach, about individuals who potentially there's concerns due to mental health with evictions coming up and things like that. So now we've kind of created some standardized questions to work with our civil unit to even work on are there concerns with some upcoming evictions, whether it's due to mental health? Are there children involved in the home? To how we can best work with them. So again, partnering with our homeless outreach and our housing department, trying to kind of figure out what best we can do with them, and whether it's us partnering together or us referring that case to them. I really appreciate that. The community where I represent is having more senior housing that's coming through, so the need is going to grow as we continue to grow in our population. So I'm a big supporter of this embedded community service program and was able to see the expansions since I've been here. The family shelter that we currently don't have in Washington County is a concern of mine as I continue to see the struggles- Mm-hmm ... from people, hearing the struggles of inflation and struggles of being able to afford gas. And so, in this opportunity that you really have, you are the people who are the front line. Yeah. And so what you are telling us is really important. So as you're out there, if you're seeing additional struggles, it's really important that you come back and let us know what you're seeing out there, because we are going to see some dynamic changes coming through. But also, I wanted to ask you guys, as a county commissioner and as somebody who is out talking to constituents, how can I highlight and support this program? I'm going to put that on you. I think just that there are services and support out there and encouraging folks to be able to reach out. We have our 24/7 crisis response unit, which is separate than our teams for the co-response. And so for voluntary folks, if they're in a mental health crisis, they can always call that. We tell folks to not hesitate to call 911, though. I think sometimes our families become, as the mental health continues to increase in their loved ones, their normal pushes, and so they sometimes that line gets really blurred of what is normal and what is not, per se. And so we're constantly having conversations with people that if somebody feels threatened or scared, and we do have experts behind the scenes for emergency response that can deal with that. And that's sometimes a barrier for people to call 911 in a mental health crisis because they don't want their loved one to go to jail, or they're not sure what will happen to them. But it's like safety is always first. Our teams are all trained, as it was mentioned, a lot of them go through the CIT training for patrol as well. So reach out and call. We have social workers in the jail if somebody ends up there. We work very closely with all of them. So again, it's those collaborations, and to just encourage people to reach out, even a question. There's NAMI out there. There's so many support and services. We just have to connect people to it. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. Yep. Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to share my thanks for the seven of you that are here, for presenting, for really sharing and showing us how important this is and the need that is in the community. My only question, and I'm not sure who wants to take this one, but the referrals continue to increase year over year. So if we look at Washington County and Woodbury, the two communities that have had this for the longest, those referrals are now either at 700 or just over 700 for 2025. So at what point does it make sense for us to even look for a third team to go into place there? And in all seriousness, right? You've really shown how important this is. I think the detective from Stillwater said this isn't traditional police work. But it's needed. And so is there a point, is there a call volume, is there some sort of threshold, maybe Tracy, that you use to say, "This is where I'm thinking we need to ask for more?" So I think when we looked at this a few years ago at the beginning of the three-year expansion project, again, we calculated out what we needed for the social workers for the bigger departments of the sheriff's office and Woodbury PD, and then one for each of the others, and some of the smaller ones to even share. But what we didn't know at that time, again, is how much crossover there is. So again, that mental health piece does not just stay in what seems to be a traditional mental health call. So we have picked up a lot of other stressors that we know where we could add more assistance, as mentioned, for evictions with the sheriff's office, domestic abuse, the housing pieces, all of that. And so I think that as we continue to add teams and social workers, there's always that need that we fill it for what we need, and I know that's not a direct answer. But there's so much more we can do with that mental health piece and social workers, and sometimes it's alternative response, too. So are there other areas where we can embed mental health social workers that would be able to potentially avoid a 911 mental health call, too, such as libraries and parks, and other opportunities? Or can we partner sometimes with EMS and fire if they don't need to have law enforcement on scene? But I think the thing that has been great about this program is as we've added the social workers, we've also looked at where else can we be helpful. Woodbury, in particular, is hoping to add a detective specifically for domestic violence, and potentially have a non-sworn individual professional to partner with that person as well. And I think, just being open to different opportunities of how we can add social workers. So in agreement is that there's always that room for more in terms of where we can fill the time, and the need is great. But these guys are great at being creative and thinking out of the box, and covering a lot of ground with the folks that we have. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I'm not going to repeat what my colleagues said because I agree with their great insights into this. I think when Detective Shaver and I spoke at then Chief Koerner's retirement, he was so excited to talk about all the incredible work and the actual data that not only he sees every day dealing with it, but the impact it's had on the community. And then the other is one of the reasons why we're here today, is just that feedback that Detective Shaver gave to me. But also when we did the county month visits, when I was in the Cottage Grove Service Center, Commissioner Karwoski, one of the social workers mentioned the increase in mental health calls to Oakdale, and it would be helpful. So I think, and now as of today, they were approved. So I do think the coordination and communication regarding this program is truly making a difference. And I do know that Cottage Grove is looking at adding a second one. I have had conversations with St. Paul Park about having an embedded social worker in their department as well. I also think when you look at the growth of the program because of what we know, we didn't have one in dispatch before. We didn't have one in the jail before. Now we see all of that, and how that continuum of care can have a positive impact on our communities. And so, those are the things that I just really wanted to highlight the importance of the work that you do and the results that it's providing our residents. And it is saving lives, and it is saving tax dollars, and it's just making a positive impact. And I do think if Detective Shaver's at council meetings, he's at different community events, and I'm sure he'll be at the Point in Time event in the fall. Those are the ways that we highlight this in our community, and be able to bring that connection there. And then the final thing I want to say is domestic violence calls and calls of neighbors in crisis are some of the most dangerous calls, if not the most dangerous calls for our law enforcement teams. And if there's been contact before, that information is available to law enforcement to know, like, "Okay, now we know what we got to go in with." And domestic violence calls are increasing across the country. And so I'm very pleased that Woodbury's taking that initiative, and I think it is something that not only this board, but in connection with community services, with the sheriff's department, with the county attorney's office, how do we also have an impact on that from a county perspective? So thank you very much everyone for being there, especially good boy Riggs. Detective, you don't want to wake a sleeping dog. So thank you very much for being here today. Thank you, commissioners Madam Chair Administrative, Administrator Corbid. Madam Chair and commissioners, thank you as well to the team that came to present today, and thank you to the board for giving us time to do that. Just a little bit of history on the program, just as a reminder. Part of the money we used to do this expansion came out of the public safety aid that the state provided us back in 2023, I believe we got that. And so while a majority of that money went to direct payments for retention for law enforcement and social workers, we did put a significant chunk to help this transition, to give additional financial incentive for cities to add somebody. When the program started, the actual cost share on a social worker was about 80% city, 20% county. We are now at a point where we allowed for a 75% cost share for the county, 25 city in the first year, and now we're at 50/50 going forward. And so, we have funding available for the team that you see here today in the county going forward in '27, including the funding for the '27 position in Oakdale will be in the recommended '27 budget when you see it later this summer. But just wanted to make you aware of that history. And also, I would just remind you, as we talk about the core mandates, or the core function and mandates discussions we're having, you can see here, this is where you heard about the importance of this program and the prevention it provides, but it's not something we're required to do. And so you heard from Director Castillo about how there's a lot of cost shares happening and not enough funding to do mandated services. It makes this balance very difficult on do you expand core functions or non-mandated programs when you're seeing reductions in mandated. So you just can see here the difficult choices that will need to be made by the county board as you move forward in the budget process. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. The next item on our agenda is from Public Works, and it is of adopting a resolution in support of Park and Recreation Month, and that is going to be presented by Mr. Williams, JJ Williams, our parks manager. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. My name again is JJ Williams, and I'm a parks manager here with the Public Works department. Today we'll be reviewing Washington County's parks systems and offerings, the numerous public health benefits and economic benefits that parks and trails provide their communities, and the success that Washington County Parks has had in delivering high-quality facilities and programs. Washington County parks and trails provide a gateway to the tranquility fostered by natural areas and allow for residents and guests to enjoy open spaces and access nature close to home. Year after year, parks and trails consistently demonstrate their importance to communities through a variety of uses. Reservable public spaces, recreational programming, and accessible connections to the outdoors are all examples of the benefits that are available to the public. Washington County strives to meet expectations through a park system that consists of a variety of parks, trails, a conservation area, and the historic courthouse. The system includes over 5,000 acres of public land and over 100 miles of trails. The system is operated and maintained by over 150 staff annually. Across Washington County parks, there are dozens of different recreational activities that users can enjoy, no matter the season or the user's ability level. According to the most recent visitor use surveys, the five most popular activities in the park system are hiking or walking, using play areas, swimming, picnicking, and camping. The park's community events serve as a longstanding opportunity for staff from multiple departments to connect with the public, as well as offer family-friendly outdoor activities that highlight the variety of what the parks have to offer. Our largest event, the Bluegrass Festival at Lake Elmo Park Reserve, drew approximately 2,500 visitors in 2025, and Christmas at the Courthouse boasted an attendance of over 1,800 people. Combined, the park's programs and events for 2025 had over 8,000 participants. Washington County Parks also offers a variety of educational programs, nature and history programs, outdoor recreation programs, and summer day camps. The summer day camps continue to be highly popular, with enrollment for the 2026 season at capacity and staff working to accommodate as many of the over 70 children on wait lists as possible. To touch on just a few of our other programs, Yoga in the Park and Stand Up Paddleboard classes continue to be popular. Winter camp provides an outdoor escape for kids and families during the winter break from school. Campfire programs offer an added amenity for campers and park visitors alike. And escape room programs at the historic courthouse allow for participants to feel the excitement of a prison break while absorbing some local history. The National Recreation and Park Association identifies three main values that make park and recreation an essential community service. As stated in their reports, parks are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in a community, ensuring the health of families and community, and contributing to economic and environmental wellbeing of a region. They go on to say that there are no communities that pride themselves on their quality of life, promote themselves as a desirable location for businesses, or maintain that they are environmental stewards of their natural resources without having a robust, active system of parks and recreation programs for public use and enjoyment. Parks provide opportunities for physical activity and connecting with the outdoors The resulting impacts are better mental health, improved physical health, and increased physical activity. Visiting parks to use trails, participating in programs, and use of park prescriptions help promote nature contact. This strengthens social structures and improves longer-term mental and physical health. Access to recreation facilities and frequency of park visitation correlate with greater physical activity. People who use parks and open spaces are three times more likely to achieve recommended levels of physical activity than non-users. Green space exposure in urban environments corresponds with lower mortality and with improved physical health, including decrease in stress, blood pressure, heart rate, and risk of chronic disease. Parks and Recreation counters social isolation by connecting people with nature and each other through festivals, social events, performing arts, tours, and other programming. Time spent in nature positively impacts mental health by increasing cognitive performance and wellbeing, and alleviating illnesses such as depression, attention deficit disorders, and Alzheimer's. Physician-diagnosed depression was 33% higher in residential areas with the fewest green spaces when compared to neighborhoods with the most. Trees and vegetation in parks help reduce air pollution directly by removing pollutants and reducing air temperatures. Parks lower the ground temperatures with tree canopy, help to clean water, reduce flooding, and contribute to healthier air. Parks also improve the environment by enhancing stormwater management, reducing traffic noise, and increasing biodiversity. 85% of US adults support their local park and recreation agency's environmental initiatives, including conservation, educating the public on environmental issues, natural resource management, mitigating the impacts of climate change, and nurturing pollinator-friendly habitats. The National Recreation and Park Association also conducts periodic studies highlighting how local park and recreation professionals and organizations contribute to their community's economic health. The most recent study determined that local park and recreation agencies generated nearly $218 billion in annual economic activity and supported almost 1.3 million jobs. Interviews with a variety of corporate executives and organizational leaders from the private sector revealed that 87% factor in proximity to parks when considering expansion or relocation plans for their organizations. The study went on to say that home value premiums see an average impact of 8% to 10% greater value for properties adjacent to parks. This helps highlight the virtuous investment cycle for parks, and that investments in improving a community's quality of life by creating high-quality public spaces attract workers and employers, which in turn attracts more investments and jobs. The study also noted that parks often provide teenagers and young adults with their first jobs, helping to develop important life skills, and thus adding to a community's qualified workforce. Park endeavors are continuously supported in part by the community through use fees such as the vehicle permits. In the effort to provide as much value as possible for this cost, the parks strive to maintain clean and safe facilities and a welcoming and enjoyable experience for all guests. Parks permits also allow access to Anoka County parks to help increase their value to users. Free entrance days, cash assistance programs, and free permits for disabled veterans are all part of the larger equity focus to help provide opportunities for everyone to use the parks. A new partnership began in 2025 with Washington County Libraries that allows for one-week park passes to be checked out from the Lake Elmo Library and Park Grove Library. The Parks division has been very successful over the past few years in securing grant funding to support a variety of equity initiatives that aim to improve accessibility in the parks or increase usage and visitation by underrepresented groups. The Action Trackchair is an all-terrain wheelchair that provides users with the mobility needed to explore the parks and enjoy the sense of freedom and independence that outdoor spaces are known for. Water safety programs and activities are held at select county beaches that teach both children and adults how to stay safe in and around the water. Life jackets are provided for free to program participants through the use of grant funds. Parks has begun conducting an American Indian cultural landscape study that'll help to identify areas of historic and cultural significance within the parks and provide the necessary background needed to guide future planning, interpretive, and restoration efforts. A social media marketing effort has been funded that allows parks to partner with local influencers to promote the parks and various programs in an effort to more effectively reach non-park users and encourage them to visit the parks and provide additional education and information to the community at large. In 2017, a program began to provide free park passes to households that qualified for some cash assistance programs through community services. In 2023, staff revised the implementation strategy for this program in order to reach more of those identified households. The new process was more streamlined, which reduces both the cost to the county and the staff time needed to administer the program. These efficiencies have also led to higher redemption rates for qualified households. The success of Washington County Parks in a variety of capital, programming, equity, and operational endeavors has been recognized and awarded on both a local and national level, earning seven National Association of Counties Achievement Awards since 2020. 15 Minnesota Recreation and Park Association Awards of Excellence since 2018, and three National Association of County Park and Recreation Officials awards in the last three years. Multiple individual achievement and professional awards have also been earned by Park Division staff, including from the county's Employee Recognition Awards program and various professional associations. In conclusion, the requested board action is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month in Washington County, and set the first non-holiday Tuesday of every month as Free Tuesday for Washington County Parks. I will stand for any questions. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Chair. To get this before us, I'll make the motion to adopt a resolution proclaiming the month of July 2026 as Park and Recreation Month in Washington County, and set the first non-holiday Tuesday of every month as Free Tuesday for Washington County Parks. Seconded by Commissioner Cox. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you. JJ, thank you for the presentation highlighting our parks. Got to commend you, our leadership, Alex McKenney, and your complete department and employees throughout the parks. We get rave reviews from our parks. It's because of the natural beauty they present. I'm glad in recent years, we've been able to add acreage to some of the parks. I think the program you point out is really invaluable, and I like how we've been making strides on making the parks more welcoming to different cultures. I think we've been working on... We got the first Tuesday of every month that's free, and I think in a workshop not too long ago, we talked about other strategies to make our parks more affordable. But thank you for the presentation, and I know award's coming up, so congratulations on that. Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Williams, thank you for the presentation. Lots of awards coming through our parks. Team, I know there's a lot of work to do. I know there's not a lot of extra people to do the work. And I just want to thank you and your team for all of that. Our parks are the gem. I like to think of Washington County, they're really what makes our community special. And you'll find my family every weekend at one of our parks. And so I've gotten to know several of the deputies up at Square Lake quite well, because we're always there. And so I'm just grateful that we have them, that I feel they're accessible for all of our community and those beyond as well. There's a lot of Wisconsin license plates driving in and paying $7 permits as well. So, thank you and congratulations to you and your team for this award. Commissioner Miron. Thank you, JJ. I couldn't help but as you were doing your presentation, think about the impact that our Land and Water Legacy program in Washington County has had on our park system. You talked about the economic benefits, you talked about the public health benefits, the equity benefits of our parks. And what an impact the voters allowed us to make in expanding parks and providing those opportunities here to our citizenry, not only in Washington County, but the counties that surround us and participate in the regional park system that we have. So, just really pleased that we've had that opportunity to utilize funding to take advantage of those benefits that you identified here as part of our park system. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Williams, for the presentation. And the other thing I'll add besides the Land and Legacy is the 10 million of bonding dollars that the state appropriates to the Met Council to help fund some of our parks operations and plans. So appreciate that. If there's no further discussion, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron. Aye. Commissioner Karwoski. Aye. Commissioner Cox. Aye. Commissioner Clausen. Aye. Commissioner Bigham. Aye. Resolution passes five zero. Thank you. And now we are on to one of our favorite things to do here, is accept an award of excellence from the Minnesota Recreation and Park Association from the hard work of our parks and rec staff. I'll be passing it off to Jared Fluellen here to represent Minnesota Recreation and Park Association. Good morning, Chair and Commission. Appreciate being here. Like JJ said, I'm Jared Fluellen. I am the City of Eagan Assistant Parks and Recreation Director, and also a member of the MRP Awards Committee. Chair and Commissioner, it is an honor to be here today to present a Minnesota Recreation Parks Association 2025 Award of Excellence to Washington County. Special hello to Commissioner Miron. Nice seeing you again. Hope everyone in the family is doing well. I would like to start my presentation today to tell you a few things about the Minnesota and Parks Recreation Association. The Minnesota Recreation Parks Association was formed in 1937 to foster the growth and development of the parks and recreation profession throughout the state. Presently, we have approximately 850 members from municipal, county, state, district, commercial, and private agencies The MRPA Award of Excellence program was created to recognize agencies and their staff for outstanding and unique projects from this past year. The awards committee feels it is important to increase awareness and appreciation for the excellent parks, trails, facilities, recreation programs, and services that are occurring in Minnesota. The Permitted Foraging Program is a great example of a project in Minnesota that meets the criteria of excellence. Congratulations to the Washington County staff for submitting an excellent nomination. Thank you, commissioners, for the continued support of Parks and Recreation. Director McKinney and Manager Williams, and the entire Washington County team continue to display the exceptional talent of Washington County Parks and Recreation Department throughout the state of Minnesota. On behalf of the MRPA Awards Committee, it is my pleasure to present the Award of Excellence to Washington County for the Permitted Foraging Program project. Thank you very much to our staff. Mr. Williams and Mr. McKinney, and all the park staff, just congratulations on a well-deserved award. The pride that the staff has is reflected by the popularity of our parks by our residents. And I know it keeps them going to be able to provide that type of amenity at such a high service level. And our staff to be recognized is very appreciative. So, thank you. Anybody have any com... Commissioner Mirro. Yeah, just to put in perspective, Mr. Fluellen is a Forest Lake High School graduate. Is it? Went to school with my son, Mark, and I remember one spring he was out at the farm helping pick rocks on a field. But nice to see your success here with the Parks Association and the work that you do. Thanks for being here. Great. Thanks, Commissioner, for bringing up that story. I hope the tractor's okay. And then board, should we take a photo with the staff and presenter? Board staff surround you wherever you go. Staff. Stop. Okay, go. Surround him. Do you usually have to ask for the chair? Congrats. Thanks for being here. Congrats. Yes, it's awesome. Well, you should get Alex or somebody. JJ. He is vegan, but, I mean- I didn't vote ... it's okay. Washington County resident. Oh, great. Well, yeah, I guess you can be in then. I saw one thing I can't stand being in a picture. On three. One, two, three. Awesome. That's good. All right. Next item on the agenda is general administration. Administrator Corbett. Good morning, commissioners, again. I have two short items for you. One, to follow up on this award idea. We were notified by the National Association of Counties that we have been selected for five achievement awards. Those five programs that have been awarded are the Go Washington website, the Emergency Housing Services building, the Equity in Parks and Recreation Playground Equipment project, the Gold Line Joint Powers Board, and the Mental Health in Motion Community Services Department project. So, those five projects were selected for achievement awards by NACO. The second item I have, commissioners, on your desk today there is a one-page document that has a number eight in red on the top right-hand side of it. A few weeks ago, during commissioner reports, Commissioner Clausen noted that she would like the board to consider a moratorium related to data centers in Washington County. Several commissioners, after the meeting, asked questions of staff related to the county's role in planning and zoning and how that relates to the issue of data centers. And then in subsequent emails, Commissioner Clausen asked staff to begin studying data center opposition and asked for an update. So the staff from administration, public works, and the county attorney's office did what I would call a cursory review of this issue, and on your desk this morning is a one-pager that talks about this issue. The document identifies the following: the statutory authority for cities for municipal planning. It identifies Chapter 394 as providing county statutory authority for planning. It does not allow the county to provide planning in municipalities or townships unless the local entity requests it and there is a contract for those services. And it also talks about what happened in 2019 when the county board voted to transfer the zoning authority it currently had in townships back to the townships. The county, at that time, retained zoning authority for properties surrounding bodies of water and mining in the townships. The document also notes that in the areas where the county has retained the zoning authority, data centers are not an allowable use under our code. The document does contain the list of allowable uses within those shoreline and mining areas, and those uses that could be done with a conditional use permit. So based on this review, a county-passed moratorium would only be binding in the areas that we control, shoreline and mining areas, and data centers are already not allowed in those areas Now the board would certainly have the opportunity and the option to ask townships if they would like to reverse the 2018 action and give the county back their zoning authority. But I would note that that process back in 2018 took a number of years to complete, and there was a tremendous amount of discussion and engagement with the townships and other interested parties. So because moving forward on this issue in this area would be a project that would take a significant amount of staff and time, and likely some expense, we are looking for direction from the board on the issue. I'm not asking for that direction today. I would just ask that you read the document that we provided, and if you have further questions, to please let staff know, and then we will have additional conversations with board members on how to proceed. I'd also note that there's been a lot of work done at the state level on legislation to do the activities around planning and zoning and the impacts of data centers. I know that the Association of Minnesota Counties has prepared some information, as well as the Department of Commerce, I believe, did some work on the regulation of data centers. So that information is available to you, and so I just point that out. Please take a chance to look at that document, have some discussions with staff, and we'll see how we want to proceed as a board. With that, I would answer any questions the board might have. Commissioner Clausen. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate the work. I was wondering about the groundwater management plan that we passed, as well as the watershed budgets that the county commissioners oversee. I was hoping that we would get a little bit more on those topics and on our authority on that. But I do appreciate the permitted primary uses and the discussion on zoning authority. But I will put that in writing, too, the follow-up questions. Thank you. Any other comment? Okay. Anything else, Administrator Corbid? No, Madam Chair. Okay. Then we are on to commissioner reports. Commissioner Clausen, do you want to start us off? Actually, no. If Stan could do it, that'd be great. Okay. Well, let's just go with Commissioner Miron. We'll just go this way and then- Thank you ... circle back through. Thank you, Madam Chair. Not a lot of policy issues to talk about, other than I received an email, along with Commissioner Cox, from one of our new appointees, or will be appointed to the Carnelian Marine Watershed about the change in plumbing code that's being proposed that would expressly prohibit stormwater being used as an alternative water source. We had some discussion about this at the Clean Water Council meeting, and there's a discussion going on today as we meet about it. I know our executive director for the Clean Water Council was representing the Clean Water Council's interest on this. And because of that email, Stephanie Suter of our public health staff is attending that meeting today as well to represent the county's interest in this as well. So, stormwater reuse is a big part of our groundwater plan. It's a significant effort that's been going on within Washington County and has really helped reduce our reliance on groundwater as a source of water. And so this potential change in the plumbing code has significant effects to Washington County as a whole. So I'm pleased that that email triggered a broader discussion. Mm-hmm. I'm hoping that we have strong representation at that meeting to make sure that what's being proposed doesn't pass. It would have a significant impact on the work that's going on within Washington County and really statewide in many instances. So that's all I have, Madam Chair. Thank you. Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was able to attend an EXCITE Teacher Externship at the Miron Farm. It's incredible to see the work that happens for teachers out of the school year to really expose them to options for students in high school as they're looking at careers. So that Pathways program is pretty incredible, and thank you for the invitation to join in. I did then attend a Saint Croix Area Agencies Council meeting hosted by the United Way of Washington County East. So I was able to sit around the table with a group of about 20 nonprofit leaders and just hear what's going on in the community and how some of the changes are impacting their work as well. So great to be there, and I have more follow-up to do. And then last night, I briefly attended, because there were a lot of questions for staff, the Highway 10 and 17 open house there in Lake Elmo. So I heard great feedback. I saw some sticky notes, so I'm hopeful that the team got the information that they were looking for. But always appreciate all that public input and comment that is accepted at those meetings. So thank you. Yeah. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Chair. Some of the highlights for the past week for me were, had a Workforce Development Board meeting Had a TAB meeting, which is the Transportation Advisory Board meeting. Had a Woodbury Economic Development Commission meeting. That was this morning, before our board meeting. Our CDA, Chris Eng and Tyler Hasselbeck, for the Open the Business, presented what we're doing in the county on economic development and the Open for Business programming to the Woodbury Economic Development Commission. Very well received. Mayor Burt was there, and there were different members. Very well received, and a lot of good facts as far as really opening up their eyes to all the small businesses we have. So much of what we're doing is encouraging small businesses, because 85% of businesses opening up are five employees or less. It's an amazing statistic. Also, I guess that concludes my presentation. Always resident follow-up, resident items. Thank you. No problem. Commissioner Clausen. Yeah. Thank you. Over this last week, I've been able to really go and outreach and talk to neighbors. It's been great to have conversations at the doors. I did hear a lot about data centers and concerns about that. And so I'm glad that we got an update today. Was hoping that it would be in writing, but I understand that it was verbal. And I have some other questions about that, because there is not just the water concern, but also the energy concern that data centers bring. So I do think that there's a lot more to this topic, and I think that we owe the taxpayers the opportunity to look into that and research it, because these are our natural resources that we can never get back. And so I do think, and from what I'm hearing, a lot of people feel the same way, where we want to feel supported, and that we're making sure that we're doing our due diligence, and that our natural resources stay protected. Over the last couple of days, there was some work done on Bailey Avenue, Casa 18. And this one is a really tough crack seal, because every probably six inches, there is a fill on Bailey. And so it's concerning to me because math and science will be constructed there, will start their new year in the fall. I don't know how this road, over the winter, with the amount of traffic volume that it sees, how it's going to stay intact and safe for drivers over the next year and a half. I have asked for additional information on the road because it's pretty bad. I just don't know how it's going to make it. We know that the city really is asking for the corridor to accommodate the urban traffic that we're seeing. So Bailey Avenue being a four-lane is extremely important in the next capital improvement project four-year projection. And so I just had a lot of people reach out to me about the road condition, asking when we can expect for the road to be done, reconstructed. And we know the importance of that road. We only have four county roads in Woodbury. And so this one's really important, and the video and the pictures that were received from the project definitely makes you wonder how we're going to be able to, over the course of the next winters, be able to handle it. But I think that more importantly, we need a technical advisory committee for capital improvement projects. Currently, we have three people on the advisory, and one of them is from the watershed. So I'm just asking that we have a community representative for each district to review projects, just to make sure that we are looking at the population and traffic load and the data points. So that's what I am asking for the board to consider. Thank you. This past week, I met with the Cottage Grove City Council, and our staff and their staff about some of the ongoing infrastructure projects that are occurring within the city and the future projects that will be happening in the city. So that was good to touch base with them. And then I also attended the Newport City Council meeting with the staff from the Ramsey-Washington Recycling and Energy Board to do the annual odor control report to the City of Newport, which we didn't have one exceedance. So great work by the R&E center staff. And then I received a call Friday, maybe a week ago, that I was appointed by Governor Walz to the Juvenile Justice Advisory Council, or JJAC. And as you know, one of the big topics that's happening right now is the raising of the age of delinquency. And so looking forward to participating in that. We did have- Through the Intergovernmental Advisory Council for the Department of Children, Family, and Youth, so the IAC of the DCYF, Commissioner Cox. We had a meeting about the implementation of the age of delinquency, and so that's continuing to be discussed and worked on. We had an absolutely amazing turnout for Strawberry Fest in Cottage Grove. Thank you to all the organizers and vendors and attendees for that. I also was able to attend the Park High School Hall of Fame breakfast, where the keynote speaker was former police chief Pete Kerner, who also has his PhD like I do, our Park High diplomas. And so it was just great to hear his story and the impact that the community has had on him. And then yesterday, we had an AMC solid waste working group, where we continued to discuss the public comment portion of a report that was required by the MPCA, and then whether or not we are going to do a presentation at the policy conference in September, in one of the general sessions. We were talking about what that content would look like. So, that is all I have. Next is board correspondence, which we have none. Prior to adjournment, I will let folks know, for those watching, we are going to take a break, and then we have two workshops that will be here in the boardroom on mandates and core functions. One from community corrections and one from public health and environment. And then later this afternoon, we have workshops about election security, we have a workshop on Park Grove Library, and we also have one on the climate action plan. And to wrap up the day, we have finance committee. So, seeing no further action before the board, we are adjourned. There we go. Go ahead. All right. We are going to go ahead and get started with Director Terry Thomas with the 2026 Mandates and Core Functions Workshop for Community Corrections. Take it away. All right. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Terry Thomas. I'm the Community Corrections Director, and our department is responsible for pretrial, probation, and parole services. And so I just want to start by reviewing our mission, which is improving community safety by providing opportunities for positive change. And how do we do that? We protect the community, we facilitate behavior change through research-based interventions, assist client in meeting expectations of the court, create pathways of successful re-entry, collaborate with community and government partners, and maximize use of technology to assist in community supervision. So here's our department. It breaks down the levies and non-levy revenue. As you can see, we're levy-dependent. You can see that it's about a 70/30 split between levy and non-levy revenue. The major non-levy revenue we get is from the state through our Community Corrections Act subsidy. You can see that there's a little bit of money there for fees for service. We get a children's mental health grant for doing mental health screenings with kids that come into the corrections system. And then you can see the miscellaneous revenue there is some placement revenue, placement fees that we get for kids that go in out-of-home placement. And then there's still a little bit of money coming in from past fees from yesteryear. In 2023, we got rid of fees, but there's still some fees in revenue recapture. So for about six years, it could still hit. You can see there's a breakdown of our expenditures. Client citizen-related support. Our personnel services, our wages and benefits are the biggest, and then we have client citizen-related support. Most of that is the placement budget. We have a little over $1.2 million placement budget. And then we have contracted services that are probably just about another $1 million in there. Otherwise, there's some materials and supplies, stuff like that. And you can see what our percentage of the budget is in the levy. Mandated services, $11 million. Core functions, about $2 million. Here's our list of our mandated services. Adult probation supervision, that's a major part of what we do. We provide also juvenile residential and community-based services. A lot of that's the out-of-home placements and the contracted services. And then you have some pretrial stuff there. Presentence investigations are reports to the court, generally. People that come in on felony-level offenses usually get ordered presentence investigations for the most part. There's a couple others in there. Condition release, those are the people that come out that are officially charged with a crime. They go for their first hearing, and then they usually get put on conditions, and we monitor those up until their disposition date. Bail/evals, those are the people that are coming into the jail. We're assessing them to see if they can be released back out into the community. Juvenile sex offender supervision. And we both have adult and juvenile diversion. And then we have a comprehensive plan mandate as well for being a Community Corrections Act county. Our core functions, the programs, 1.1, and administration is the other 1.1. Most of the program piece there is STS, which we'll talk about in a minute. The administration piece is my position, Ren, and then our support staff that support our 50 POs. All right, so examples of mandated programs with county discretion spending. One of the things that we do for adult probation supervision is we do our offender recovery program, which is Washington County's drug court, if you will. We provide services, intense services, to very high-risk, chemically dependent individuals in the community that have committed felony-level offenses. Usually, these people have a long criminal history. We believe this is a very effective way to deal with this population, but it is something that there's some discretionary spending on. We obviously partner very well with our stakeholders with this, with the county attorney, the courts. And so we provide this level of service, very intensive. The issue being that if there's a decision made to not do this, that could affect jail populations, it could affect prison populations, and it could create more victims in the community. Another area that we want to highlight there is our multisystemic therapy program for juveniles. This is a very intense in-home family program. The reason why we do this is because we believe that this helps us maintain our placement budget. If we try to keep these kids into the community, they're very high risk. They're at risk of being placed out of the home for a long period of time. If we're not doing that, they will then get placed out of the home, which then will increase the placement budget, so that's why we do that. Examples of our core functions with county discretionary spending. Obviously, our Sentence to Service program is a core function of what we do. We provide over 40,000 hours each year of work service through the county. We assist about 50 different agencies between cities, nonprofits, and municipalities. But as you know, last year our funding was cut from the state, and so now we are funding that just on our own as a county, through the levy. And then the one other spot that I wanted to highlight is juvenile diversion contracts with our community agencies, the Youth Service Bureau and the Lakes Area Center for Youth and Families. We have to provide juvenile diversion services, however, we don't necessarily need to provide it the way we are. I would still say that this is a very effective way to address diversion. It is a best practice to have an outside agency run a diversionary program. Remember, this is our kids that are low risk, low touch. We want them to get connected to services, and then be on their way. We just want to have a real light touch to our corrections system, if you will. So with that, I would stand for questions. Thank you, Director Thomas. Commissioner Bigham. Thank you, Director Thomas. Just a couple comments, and then I maybe would want to follow up information on one of them. But on the bail determination, this is a comment. That helps in so many different ways, that any sort of cutting of that is just not really good financial practice, because it keeps people that shouldn't be in jail from being in jail, but yet contact information and be able to contact them. And so it's the right way to go, in my opinion, for justice and just from an economic perspective. And then my question about the juvenile diversion. So as you know, the age of delinquency is causing a lot of concern about implementation because we didn't have a mechanism to communicate about how probation would be working with child protection and vice versa. So if there are fewer youth in juvenile delinquency diversion, the state does fund youth intervention programming, YIPA funding, which is Youth Service Bureau for our county, and then there's another couple nonprofits that we engage with. My question is, and I don't expect an answer now, but maybe to follow up, what is the reality that some of the money that we are able to receive from that is decreased, because theoretically, there'll be fewer youth in juvenile delinquency programming? If you're tracking what I'm saying. And so, like I said, I don't expect an answer now, but I think that's a curiosity because that state funding is a very important, reliable, data-driven program that works, as you mentioned. And so it's a concern of mine, and I know that it's more than likely going to get brought up at JJAC in the discussion group on the age of delinquency. So that's it. Thank you. I will follow up with that and get information to you. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Director Thomas, thanks for the presentation. Couple things stood out. Under the department expenditures, '25 to 2026, it only increased 2%. I give you kudos for that. And then my question was, you mentioned the funding on the... Is this the funding for Sentence to Serve, was it cut last year? Yeah. Will this be the second year it's cut? Madam Chair, Commissioner, yes, this would be the second year. It was removed in the last budgetary cycle. And I think you said a dollar figure. I didn't catch it, though. It was around 100,000, right, Ren? Just want to... Yep. About a little over 100,000. And then we picked that up through levy. Mm-hmm. I know as a board, we really believe in that program. Our residents, I have always had residents laud about that. Mm-hmm. And it helps those cities, and the fee we might charge them, they're going to have to spend a lot more than that. So really when you think of the true roughly 100,000, the projects they do are getting so much more to the cities in cost savings. And I think, as far as really getting someone acclimated to get back into normal life, I think it's a good program for rehabilitation. What I'm wondering, I didn't see that line item for Sentences Serve anywhere. I'm just curious where it might be on the... It's not under mandated, right? Yes, Madam Chair, Commissioner, it is a core function. That's what we have it under is the core function- Okay ... is where it is. And it'd be on the second slide. I can show you. It'd be in this line item right here in the programs. Okay. Commissioner Karwoski, it's on page 23 of your document, too. Okay. It's identified with three other programs. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Miron. Yeah. Just curious, Director. With respect to the Sentencing to Serve, and obviously we're not receiving funding from the state to do that, how many counties in Minnesota discontinued that program because of the lack of state funding? And I'm really pleased that we're funding it. I think it is an excellent program. I think really it helps those people that otherwise would be incarcerated to get back into society and give back to society. But I'm just curious as to what other counties maybe had done with that lack of funding. Madam Chair, Commissioner, great question. I'm not sure the exact number, but I know that some counties did stop doing their STS program. I think we're at, Ren, is it 18 now? I think there's 18 left in the state, and there was a significant more prior to that. So about 20% of the counties are continuing the program? Yeah, I would guess, yeah. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Just curious. I think Washington County has always been a leader. I'm pleased that we're part of the 20%. All right. Any other comments? Oh. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you. My theory is, and I think the state, this is not a negative comment regarding state legislature. When they make a cut, I think they try to cut a program that they think either a county will pick up. It's the best of both worlds. They made their cut, and they know the program's going to... It's successful, and I think that's why they picked Sentences Serve. So there. Thank you, Director Thomas. We will transition now to Public Health and Environment with Director Dave Brummel. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. As stated, I'm Dave Brummel, Director of Public Health and Environment, and I'll go over the department's mandates and core services. So we'll get started with the department revenues. Levy revenue, I'll point out, is 10.4% of our overall department budget. So we're a department that's relatively little levy funding to support our operations. Most of our revenues come from non-levy revenue. I'll highlight some of our big levy revenue details. Other taxes is our county environmental charge. It is our largest source of revenue for the Department of Public Health and Environment. We also collect money from license and permits, and that's tied to the county fee schedule, and specific to the fees that we collect for our food pools and lodging, our hazardous waste generation licensure, lodging, again, tied to our fee schedule. We also get intergovernmental revenue. That represents all of the state and federal grants that we receive on an annual basis. So when you think about the local public health grants, strong foundations, our TANF funding, statewide health improvement partnership, those are all counted within intergovernmental revenue. And then under fees for services, that is the revenue that we collect from our environmental centers. We have reciprocal use agreements with the surrounding counties, which gives us revenue. We also collect and get revenue from all of the paint that we collect at the environmental centers. Fun fact, that we actually get paid to collect that paint and turn it back into the recycling services. And then that also includes the reimbursement that we get from the sheriff's department for administering the correctional health or the jail medical program. For department expenditures, really matches our department revenue. I will say our second biggest expense is personnel services, and that pays for all of the staff that we employ to provide all the services of Department of Public Health and Environment. The second biggest is services and charges. So within that expenditure line item, the big cost drivers are, number one, our payment to the Recycling and Energy Center for joint activities work that they do. It's also included in there is payments to our contracted vendor, Clean Harbors, that run both of our environmental centers and our yard waste facility at the Northern Environmental Center, and then will eventually come online for central yard waste and southern yard waste as well. And then other financing charges, that really is what we do when we intentionally shift money, county environmental charge, to fund balance, so that we can pay for future capital improvement projects that are tied to the solid waste management plan. So under mandated services, I know that you've heard this many times before, it's laws passed by the state or federal government requiring action or provision of services or programs. One of the things that's unique to the state of Minnesota is Minnesota has Statute 145A, which is known as the Local Public Health Act, and that mandates that we must identify local public health priorities and implement activities to address the priority areas of public health responsibilities, and there are six areas of public health responsibilities. So that's really a guiding light for what we do at the local level as the local Department of Public Health and Environment. So you'll see there, disease prevention and control. The mandate is to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Second is administration. So within administration, it's more than typically what you would define as administration. All of our planning, assessment, and performance management is housed within administration and this budget line item. So you think about when we do that work to do the community health assessment, our community health improvement plan, our solid waste management plan, groundwater plan, all of that planning and assessment is in the department's administration budget. As for core functions, a core function is a county service or program that supports the county's mission. I did add under this third bullet, a little different than some of my predecessors, other directors, the services that the county board has determined to be important through resolution, ordinance, strategic plan, and I added groundwater plan, solid waste management plan, our community health improvements, and that really drives some of those. If it's not mandated, it appears in some of those high-level department plans as well. And I understand it can be a little bit shocking. Vice Chair Cox, I think a couple of meetings ago, when you look in there and see, wow, WIC is not a mandated service. Or, we talked recently about family health, specifically our public health home visiting program, not mandated services. And it can be a little shocking to think about them, that they're not mandated. However, they are definitely core services, core functions that this board has certainly supported throughout the years. So, excuse me for a second. Examples of mandated programs with county discretionary spending. So I mentioned, and one of the things that I highlighted was disease prevention and control. And again, that mandate is to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. But what's discretionary in there, it doesn't say which diseases that we need to address. So you heard it when the Mosquito Control Board was here. I think on June 9th, there was quite a few articles or some film. WCCO did an article about tick prevention. And so that's one of the things that's in those news articles. I think they reference Washington County as a hotbed of tick activity. We certainly hear that from the constituency in Washington County. So that's one of the things that although it's discretionary, under disease prevention and control, it's something that we choose to invest in. We have that service impact. If we stop doing that, we would decrease the understanding of disease prevalence and educational outreach to constituents. Same thing with healthy communities. The exact mandate is to promote healthy communities and healthy behaviors. Again, Statute 145A says that we need to identify local priorities. So some of those things that we've identified are things like community gardens, community mental health events, health literacy workshops. We've done some parenting programs for parents about online gaming, social media. So those aren't into the mandates. It doesn't go down into that level of detail. Again, those have been identified by constituents or this board as services that we want to continue. Within our Subsurface Sewage Treatment Program, SSTS, we are the authority that regulates septic systems. Sorry, tripped on that word. But nothing in that mandate say that we must do reloader classes. However, we have gotten direction from this board. A lot of septic transitions happen at point of sales, and so those compliance inspections happen at that time. So we do offer reloader classes because they are able to help educate sellers and buyers about the regulations around septic systems. And then resource recovery, I highlighted our R&E joint activities. Certainly, we've got the mandate to hit that 75% recycling rate. How we do that, there's a lot of discretion in there. So we do have discretion on how much we want to invest through R&E for programs like BizRecycling or Business Pollution Prevention Program, mattress recycling. Programs of that nature that you've heard either at the R&E board or at this board in workshops provide a significant return on investments and work toward that 75% goal. And then examples of core functions with county discretionary spending. Again, I tied to our family home visiting program. We heard last week, and we won an award about our jail parenting classes. Those jail parenting classes are not a mandate. They are discretionary, but as you heard last week, they're vitally important. We also have a strong partnership with our sheriff, with our county jail. So that's an area that we have huge, again, a return on investment for serving our clients. Within the WIC program, we do have within our scope, we could decrease the number of service locations and the number of hours that WIC clinics are open, but of course, that would decrease the availability of appointments to the residents that we serve. And then within our food protection and lodging inspections, another example of discretionary spending is when our food inspectors are working with restaurants, they do talk about food waste prevention. And we support those regular entities to really encourage them to recycle and collect those organics, which ties really nicely with what we're trying to do at the Recycling and Energy Center. But again, within that mandate or core services, there's nothing saying that we have to do those programs, but we see a large return on investment. So with that, commissioners, I'll stand for any questions you have about mandates or core services. Thank you for the presentation. Commissioner Bigham. I just appreciate you taking the time to go through this. And it just lifts up what I think many of us have said for a long time, that you don't get credit for the lives that you and your team save because of the programs and the policies that are implemented. And you've aptly pointed out that there are many non-mandated programs that do that. And so, especially in a time, in my opinion, I'll just speak freely here for a moment, about the misinformation that is coming from the federal government related to some public health programming is concerning. And so to have somebody who people see and know and trust, like our public health nurses, like the folks in the WIC clinics, and different things like that, to be able to give information to our residents is really important. So just keep up the good work and appreciate you taking the time to put this together. Thank you, Commissioner. Appreciate those comments. Commissioner Clausen. Yeah. Thank you for bringing up the tick remediation. Remediation, cannot say it. But the disease that we're hearing from East Coast is severe. The allergic reaction you can have to meat is forever, and what we're seeing is a continuation through more tick population. And if we do not spray for it, and we do not give the resources out to people, people will be harmed long term. There's no vaccination against what's happening. So I think for us, we really need to be educated as not only board members, but as staff on the importance of this phenomenon that's happening. It's probably going to get worse with climate change, I imagine. And so we're going to have to be due diligent and start teaching people how to make sure they get the ticks off of them when they're double-searching to make sure that they haven't gotten bit. Because once they get bit, they only have so long to get some type of vaccination, which may not even mean anything for that type of tick, to be honest. So it's actually a really big deal, and this is a public health threat to many of us, to babies all the way to seniors. So thank you for bringing that forward. Thank you. And thank you for your support, Commissioner. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you. Director Brummel, thanks for the presentation. Appreciate your staff and all the help they provide me with constituents. I think your department gets a lot of calls, a wide variety of topics from- Yeah ... water to yard waste are the most recent. I was curious within your presentation, within your budget items, if the Central Yard Waste site has enough money to have some level of dumping, if you can get the work done, some level of brush drop-off for 2026. Madam Vice Chair, Commissioner Karwoski, good question. Our budget does support operations in the 2026 budget for operations at the Central Yard Waste site at Afton. Right now, we're working with Public Works and the watersheds to make sure that we've got all of the appropriate approvals. I don't want to speak out of turn, but I believe Public Works is also working with the Department of Transportation to make sure that we have adequate turn lanes going into the site. So I'm not sure at what point in 2026. I haven't gotten an update on anything to announce when that site will open. But I know that team, Public Works, it's a great partnership, and they've really got their foot on the gas pedal and trying to get that open as quick as possible. But to answer your question, yes it is. From a budget standpoint, it is in the 2026 budget. Good. Thank you for that. And I know it's not part of the presentation, but I think residents would be happy if they could use that prior to snowfall. Always in the fall, there's that extra rush of dropping off wood waste, brush and such, grass clippings. Yeah. So if at all possible, rather than December, if it could get done September, October. But I know you're doing everything you can. Thank you. Appreciate those comments. All right, I will wrap us up. Thank you for the presentation. I have to say, every time someone says tick, I feel crawling on my skin, so thank you for that today. I'll take that forward. And one other thing I know that you didn't really bring up was that Washington County has our own epidemiologist on staff, and I just want to highlight how important that is. When there are questions about diseases, when there are questions about vectors, we can go directly to this person. And I'm not pulling his name up right away, so I apologize. But I just want to thank you. I think that that is really forward-looking. We don't have to share time. We don't have to call the Department of Health at the state. We can just get the questions answered right here in the building. And so thank you for that, and thanks for the presentation. I will say that our epidemiologist is Chris Keller. Thank you. He is an amazing resource. I do think we're very fortunate to have our own epidemiologist. Commissioner Bigham, you brought up that point. Really, public health works at the speed of trust, and having an epidemiologist on staff, it just helps with all of that education and building that trust. So thank you for your support. Thank you. We have three more workshops. We will take about a 10-minute break as we transition to the next room.